Turn on the news and another reel is playing: A man is brutally beaten trying to buy groceries with an EBT card in Oakland; a woman refuses to put out her cigarette during a routine traffic stop and is never heard from again; two Texas deputies fatally shoot a man with his arms raised. The viral spectacle of police brutality captured on video is now inescapable, galvanizing fresh organizing like #BlackLivesMatter. It functions much like television footage of white terrorist violence in the Jim Crow South: When enough people were presented with incontrovertible evidence of brutality, public opinion became more favorable to activists.

Filming the police turns the tables on the police surveillance that black and brown communities face daily. For example, in New York, the NYPD uses video surveillance technologies, including CCTV and TARU. The department has pioneered geospatial predictive policing initiatives like CompStat, and pushed the now controversial “broken windows” theory of community policing, focused on the close monitoring and criminalization of small offenses like littering. Mayor De Blasio and Commissioner Bratton have both voiced commitment to expanding NYPD video surveillance. In the hands of police, copwatch organizers say video surveillance technology, including body cameras, hasn’t been used to keep communities safe, but to help police avoid charges of misconduct and in the service of repression.

In academic circles, copwatching is considered a form of sousveillance, which translates from the French to “watching from below” and refers to recording or monitoring of authorities, like the police. (Surveillance, by comparison, translates to “watching from above” and refers to being monitored by authorities.) Through copwatching, communities are learning that, depending on which way the cameras are facing, they can become a powerful tool in court or in advocacy. While the state trains its gaze on communities to “keep them safe,” members of the public are increasingly aware that it is the watchers who need to be watched.

Here, we break down what copwatching is, and how to do it.

What is copwatch, anyways?

At its most basic, copwatching is filming the police as they interact with civilians in public. José Martín, a community organizer and participant in various copwatch patrols in New York and Chicago for the last 15 years, spoke with The Nation in order to demystify copwatch and why certain communities might find the practice of filming police useful.

“Copwatch can look a number of different ways,” says Martín. “[Often] it’s very local, in your neighborhood just getting together as many people as possible to film the police.”

As you might guess, the structure of each copwatch is different because different neighborhoods have different relationships to the police, but there are essentially two models for filming police interactions. “In New York, I think there are two different kinds [of copwatch],” says Martín. “One kind is the people on the block. On every block, somebody knows to film the police if the police are harassing people on their block. And then there’s a very different kind which is people doing patrols. Sometimes [copwatch] actually means organizing serious patrols and doing outreach, organizing specific groups or communities who request copwatch.” What sorts of communities might request copwatch? A surprisingly diverse swath. Martín believes that “when you organize amongst street vendors, people in gangs, sex workers, every copwatch is a little different because [of] the people who are doing it.”

While each copwatch model is unique to the needs of a specific locality, these kinds of organized, pre-scheduled patrols use specific routes and participants are well trained ahead of time in strategies for filming police.

Who is copwatches?

In New York City, most copwatch trainings are held by nonprofits. But Martín explains that copwatch typically exists in other milieux. “I’ve never done a copwatch training with a nonprofit. Most copwatching across the country has nothing to do with nonprofits. New York is a rare example where most [copwatch training] takes place through nonprofits, although certainly not all,” Martín says. “It’s much more institutional here, even though many of those institutions are radical.”

In New York, groups like Peoples’ Justice—an amalgamation of Malcolm X Grassroots, Justice Committee, and CAAAV—have been giving trainings to packed rooms of New Yorkers wondering about how to start copwatch in their respective local neighborhoods. Justice Committee, which coordinates patrols in the South Bronx, Jackson Heights, and in Washington Heights, is the parent group for something called the Cop Watch Alliance. Cop Watch Alliance is an informal collective of local copwatch patrols in parts of Brooklyn like Flatbush and Bushwick. Often, copwatch patrols are organized in anticipation of times when police activity is higher. In June, in anticipation of Pride, local LGBTQ-focused advocacy and nonprofit groups like FIERCE! and the Audre Lorde Project each held copwatch trainings that were standing room only.

Martín says that you’d be surprised at the diversity of people there to learn about filming the police. “I’ve been doing copwatch for about 15 years. I’ve done trainings for high schools who want know-your-rights trainings as part of their curricula, I’ve done it for everyone from street organizations, to gentrifiers looking to offset their impact, to very old community groups that came out of the Black Panther period, to people who were doing it already and didn’t call it copwatch, all kinds of people—mostly in New York and Chicago,” he says.

How does one copwatch?

There isn’t one prescriptive model for copwatching; best practices should be tailored to a community’s set of needs and relationship to the police. There are, however, ground rules that Martín agrees are wise to keep in mind when copwatching. “I think there are certain basic things that are always potentially going to happen when you’re filming the police,” he says.

Patrols: Copwatch is safer when it is done in a group. This helps to distribute liability and risk should police decide to challenge the copwatchers—it’s harder to single out people if you’ve made a plan to watch each other’s backs. This model is referred to as patrolling, with foot patrols being the most common. Copwatch sometimes involves patrols on bikes, but “I don’t recommend that,” says Martín. “I strongly prefer copwatch patrols on foot. You can’t organize, you can’t talk to people. Good copwatch is constantly doing outreach and education. And the education piece is ‘know your rights’ where you’re getting to know your neighbors, you’re giving out contact informations and resources, you’re offering to do a training in their community. It becomes a social question,” he says.

Rebecca Heinegg, a criminal attorney in New York who works with victims of police brutality, explains that when a team goes out to patrol, it’s best to have an attorney on call to consult should things get dicey. In New York, there are a number of practicing attorneys like Heinegg who are versed in criminal law and volunteer their time with organized copwatch patrols (one reason why preplanned copwatch can be safer). She or another attorney will make sure that they are available by phone for counsel during their patrol.

“There’s a small group of volunteer attorneys, and whenever a team in a particular neighborhood has a patrol scheduled, they will send out an e-mail asking if anyone is available to be the attorney on call for a team in East Flatbush or Sunset Park or Harlem, for example. And whoever is free responds with their cellphone number and contacts the person leading the patrol for that night. When they’re heading out, the patrol will text or call to check in and when they come back in safely at the end of the night, they check out with the attorney on call to let us know that they finished without incident,” Heinegg explains.

Heinegg’s eight months volunteering with copwatch in New York City have been incident free. “They’re careful about how they do it and they’re good at what they do,” she says of the patrols she volunteers with. “Almost never do I get calls with problems during the patrols.”

Filming: When filming police, it’s important to stay back so that you remain a neutral party. “Stay a few car lengths away so you are obviously not interfering but still within earshot,” says Martín. In theory, cops are trained to understand that filming police is legal. In practice, it’s more of a gamble.

“In New York, it’s actually in the NYPD patrol guide that it’s legal to film the police,” explains Heinegg. “There’s a consent decree called Black v. Codd that the city entered into back in the 1970s, stating that the court required the city to allow people to observe and document arrests as long as they’re not interfering. It’s really just common sense: You don’t physically interfere with what they’re doing in any way, you step back. It’s more likely to go smoothly if the person filming is not belligerent or aggressive with the police. You have to stand back a bit and just try to get a clear shot,” she says.

Martín advises copwatchers to always train the camera on the police and not the other person in the interaction. “It’s about keeping a lens on the cops,” he says. “You have to make it clear to those involved in the situation and to bystanders that you’re there to film the police.”

The method of filming has a doubled structure to it. Martín recommends that patrols film in two groups because “you need people filming the people who are filming the police.” This helps prevent the police from taking illegal action against copwatchers filming them. “For the person filming, you should try to stay quiet with the exception of documenting the exact time, date, location, or numbers on police vehicles. You should also have somebody else act as a liaison between the person filming and the police, to de-escalate for their protection,” he says.

Bring a community liason: Police may use the fact that copwatch is not widely understood against you while filming. “Usually, they try to turn the people that they’re hassling against you. You need to be ready for that,” warns Martín. Enter the community liaison. “Having someone act as a liaison who is willing to explain to the person being stopped by police that the police are lying to them about copwatch is critical.” Because police may be confrontational, copwatching involves de-escalation, outreach and education. “Once they’ve stopped someone and we start filming, one of the most standard things cops say is, ‘Now that someone is filming, I have to give you the ticket or I have to arrest you. Before, I was just going to give you a warning.’ It’s always a lie, but that’s what they say to people. You then have to make that call, because, while you want to respect the other person, if the police are doing something [violent] you want to be there to document it,” says Martín.

Generally, you need to stick around the scene after the altercation with police. “It’s really important to try to have the conversation with the person being harassed by police afterwards. It’s a tricky thing, you really have to gauge the situation. The conversation doesn’t always go well, but the majority of the time it does,” says Martín. Try to make human contact, and explain what’s happening and who you are. “You’re not just some random gawker who wants to become Internet-famous. You’re there to give them evidence. If you talk to them, they may understand and respect what you’re trying to do. They may want to [copwatch] too, and get trained themselves. As it spreads around the community, it’s a lot harder for police to engage in the same violent behavior where they harass people,” he says. “If the person involved with the police while you’re copwatching is or even isn’t arrested it’s important to try and find someone nearby who knows them, and to create contact information so that you can get them the video documentation.” Martín advises any video that doesn’t show police harassment should be deleted so as not to contribute needlessly to surveillance of the community.

Security: It’s not unheard of for police to attempt to confiscate or destroy your phone or camera during a copwatch patrol. That’s when filming the people filming police comes in handy. But there are other measures Martín recommends to keep cops from destroying evidence. “It’s incredibly important to encrypt your phone, to get basic password protection, so that police can’t look at anything on your phone or camera without a warrant,” he says. “If you are arrested or detained and the police don’t specifically go after your phone or camera, leave it with someone else. It’s also possible now to livestream to a private channel, so you’re not publicly sharing the video but it’s instantly uploaded to the Internet. That way, the police can’t just break your phone.”

Why copwatch?

Copwatch can’t always prevent police brutality. “Really what you see a lot of the time is that police act with impunity,” says Heinegg. “In New York, we’ve seen multiple examples recently. The shocking thing for people is, even being filmed, there are very few consequences for police officers. With Eric Garner, it didn’t help at all. It actually landed [Ramsey Orta] in trouble.” So why bother?

When police know they’re being filmed, they may behave differently. Many copwatch organizers believe that the act of filming police restores dignity to people who are often disrespected by law enforcement, and shifts the balance of power toward the community. “It’s about bearing witness and making the police understand that you’re watching,” says Martín.

Further, Heinegg points out, copwatch is effective because “if there is some kind of problem, you have the video evidence in the court case to follow. A lot of the times there are issues on the ground with gaps that frequently occur between what the law is and how police apply it.”

Martín participates in copwatch because he sees himself as part of a community. “It’s not about individuals filming the police, it’s all of our responsibility. And if we care about our community and love our neighbors then we have to have their backs. We copwatch to organize communities, not just to be social workers or the police’s police.”

]]>https://www.thenation.com/article/heres-how-to-cop-watch/Activists Stage a ‘Royal Shutdown’ of Barclays Centerhttps://www.thenation.com/article/activists-stage-royal-shutdown-barclays-center/Muna Mire,Muna MireDec 9, 2014Last night, hundreds of protesters converged on the Cavaliers-Nets game to continue to demand justice in the wake of the Eric Garner case.
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Protesters took to the streets of New York again last night for Eric Garner, this time under the banner of what organizers called a “royal shutdown.” A mass demonstration greeted British royals William and Kate upon their arrival at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center for the Cavaliers vs. Nets game. Later that evening, LeBron James donned a T-shirt that read “I Can’t Breathe” in solidarity with the protest raging just outside. The shirt, which James hinted at wearing, was given to him by organizers of last night’s action, Justice League NYC, and was hand delivered by Jay-Z, a co-owner of the Nets.

Last night’s actions mark the sixth consecutive night of civil disobedience since the non-indictment of Officer Daniel Pantaleo came down from a Staten Island grand jury.

By 6:30 a large crowd was gathered in front of Barclays. Shouts of “I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!” filled the wintry air as pedestrians and ticket holders looked on; some took iPhone pictures while others raised fists in solidarity. Protesters carried signs that read “All I Want For Christmas Is To Live” and “We Won’t Take It Anymore,” which the the art collective We Will Not Be Silent helped distribute. A phalanx of barricades pushed protesters chanting “How do you spell racist? N-Y-P-D!” to just a few feet from a line of police officers, who were trying to not look them in the eye.

After about a half an hour, the group held a die-in. “Let’s speak with our bodies, not with our mouths,” an organizer announced. He went on to ask for silence from those who would be observing but not participating in the die-in. In the wake of his pronouncement, only sounds from camera shutters, police radios and a helicopter circling overhead disturbed the silence, as hundreds of bodies lay still on the ground.

Like most actions taking place in New York and in cities across the country after the Eric Garner case, last night’s demonstration appeared to have been mostly unplanned apart from the time and place. Protests have been tightly timed—usually no more than two or three hours—and highly energetic. After the die-in, protesters took the intersection at Flatbush and Atlantic. Later, they would take over the Atlantic Mall, clashing with both police and private security. At least one protester was pepper-sprayed by police.

The “royal shutdown” action was organized and promoted on social media in part by the newly conceived and much buzzed about Justice League NYC, an offshoot of Harry Belafonte’s organization The Gathering for Justice. Carmen Perez, founder of the Justice League, was one of several organizers at last night’s action identifiable by the plastic crown she wore—a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the absurdity of a royal visit while protests rage in the streets.

“We have demands that need to be met,” Perez told The Nation plainly, shortly after the die-in concluded. She went on to explain that her group’s demands included concessions from both Mayor Bill de Blasio and Governor Andrew Cuomo. A full list of the demands of the Justice League are posted on its website with “the immediate firing of Officer Daniel Pantaleo and all officers responsible for the death of Eric Garner” as demand number one.

Last night’s demonstration also included a contingent of protesters from Ferguson who showed up in solidarity. Talal Ahmad, a student organizer at St. Louis University, told The Nation, “I’m here for Eric Garner, Akai Gurley, Tamir Rice, Kajieme Powell, Michael Brown, it goes on and on and on. New York came down strong to show love and solidarity, to make sure we had what we needed, so there wasn’t anything to even think about to come up here and reciprocate that.”

Ahmad and others at the protest are looking towards next steps for a movement that is at once spontaneous and intentional in securing wins. Demonstrators have been agitating in a reactive way, but their victories—including last night’s on the court—have been undeniable. “I think that people are going to continue to vent for a little while, we’re going to be in the streets for a little while. But then we’re going to get more organized,” Ahmad said.

Last night’s actions indicate a turning point. The movement is gaining momentum—and allies in high profile places—but it is also growing restless. Organizers have no intention of slowing down, but their challenge now is to channel that energy into a sustained strategy for making change.

]]>https://www.thenation.com/article/activists-stage-royal-shutdown-barclays-center/Youth Are on the Frontlines in Ferguson, and They Refuse to Back Downhttps://www.thenation.com/article/youth-are-frontlines-ferguson-and-they-refuse-back-down/Muna Mire,Muna Mire,Muna MireOct 16, 2014

“This moment is consecrated in blood,” a representative from the Organization for Black Struggle said before a crowd of 3,000 in downtown St. Louis last weekend. It was at a rally following the “Justice For All” national march—the centerpiece of “Ferguson October,” a four-day “weekend” of organized resistance and protest in the wake of the killing of unarmed teen Michael Brown by Officer Darren Wilson of the Ferguson, Missouri Police Department. In attendance was a diverse assembly of locals as well as people from across the country—people of all ages, races, and political orientations.

Reminding the crowd of the historical continuity present in the spectacle of black pain in America, the speaker went on: “If this moment is to become a movement…we have to make the cost of black life too high for them to take it.” Many speakers invoked legacies of organized struggle, as well as historical connections to slavery. The Dred Scott case, which upheld the legal status of slaves as chattel, was decided at the Old Courthouse just a stone’s throw from where the rally was being held.

One of the most striking aspects of the weekend was the way in which organizers drew connections between various social justice struggles—from the movement to end the occupation of Palestine to the #FightFor15 fast food workers campaign—and the fight for justice for Mike Brown. Representatives from these movements and others were invited to attend and speak about the relationships between these struggles and the fight against police brutality, the criminalization of black youth and white supremacy. The result was an impressive display of solidarity.

“When [Suhad Khatib] was talking about Palestine and the connections, and how as a Palestinian she needs to stand up to oppose the oppression of people of color in this country, so many people were cheering who I feel like would not have had awareness of the issue before. It’s been really great to see people being able to make these connections between different forms of oppression,” volunteer and St. Louis public school teacher Leah Patriarco explained to me.

After the rally, marchers carried a glass coffin to the St. Louis Police Department headquarters. Its cracked exterior reflected a distorted picture of the march. On the way, organizers stopped the march in the middle of the street to hold silence for four minutes and thirty seconds, symbolizing the amount of time Mike Brown’s body lay on the ground outside after he was gunned down.

* * *

It has been just over two months since Michael Brown’s death on August 9. In the weeks since, three other black men have been killed by police in St. Louis—including 18 year old Vonderrit Myers Jr. who was shot either holding a sandwich or a gun, depending on who you ask. Meanwhile, Darren Wilson remains on the Ferguson Police Department’s payroll and a Grand Jury has yet to hand down an indictment.

Under these circumstances, the racial tension in the St. Louis area becomes apparent straightaway—particularly if you happen to be black.

Recently, activists have made a point of occupying spaces traditionally sheltered from political protest, including sporting events. In these instances, the toxicity of the climate and the hostility of many whites in St. Louis became apparent. My friend, writer and organizer Nyle Fort, was called a nigger by an angry white sports fan outside of a Rams football game at Edward Jones stadium on Monday night. Moments later he had to physically intervene in an altercation in which a white man threatened to “fuck up” a black woman activist. Other fans yelled at protesters to “get over it” while chanting “I am Darren Wilson.”

The night before, at a Cardinals post-season baseball game, angry fans hurled racist insults at protesters while cheering for Darren Wilson. “White people are terrified in this town,” a white couple volunteering for the march told me plainly.

At one particularly low point, I was refused service at Ferguson Brewhouse, a restaurant down the street from the Ferguson police department. We were told there was no way we could place an order, as the kitchen was closed (food orders were taken and went out to several other people in the restaurant after we were denied).

It was there that I met Ashton, a U.S. army sergeant who invited us to join him at his table. I learned that the restaurant had become a flashpoint for open racial tensions. He told me that during the early stages of the resistance in Ferguson, he and a friend were denied service there. They left, and soon returned with more than fifty mostly black fellow protesters and occupied the restaurant until management conceded and served them. After that there was an unsteady peace. He and his friends, all of whom were black, seemed happy to take up space in the restaurant. They didn’t entertain any delusions about being wanted. Their presence was strategic. In Ferguson, for those in the process of resisting oppression, occupying the frontlines in hostile spaces becomes a necessity.

* * *

On Saturday evening, a candlelight vigil was held at the spot in Canfield Green where Mike Brown was gunned down. The crowd paid their respects, and eventually began to march to the Ferguson police department, led by Brown’s mother. Someone in the crowd had rigged a mobile speaker system which played Tupac’s “Changes” as the procession rounded a corner and the precinct came into view.

Earlier, at the rally in the park downtown, organizer Tef Poe told the crowd that “this ain’t your grandparents civil rights movement.” In that spirit, the mood that night was one of raucous resistance and joyous protest. A dance party was held in the street. I met an 18 year old organizer with Lost Voices named Josh, whose wrists were still scarred from being tightly-handcuffed while under arrest in Ferguson during the early days of protests. He told me that he bears the burden of police brutality in his town, and if he has to live with that burden and organize to resist it rather than live his young life unhindered, he may as well have fun with it.

Sunday’s evening breakaway protest was similarly exultant. Thousands of people marched through the foggy streets to converge on St. Louis University’s campus. Protesters shut down an intersection, jumping rope in the middle of the street while chanting at the police: “They think it’s a game, they think it’s a joke!” The tactics deployed by activists during the action were playful yet powerful commentary on the value of black life in the eyes of the police. The crowd was made up mostly of youth, including a massive contingent of SLU students

After a tense twenty-minute standoff with the SLPD, officers stepped aside to let protesters pass. Cornel West appeared in solidarity with the young people leading the march as the procession advanced towards the SLU campus. At the front of the march was Vonderitt Myers Sr., father to the recently slain Shaw teenager. Upon arriving at the university, the group was met by campus security, which initially attempted to bar them from entering but quickly opened the gates. Once on campus, the protesters shouted, “Out of the dorms and into the streets!” as they filled the central quad. Students poured out of nearby buildings to show support and bring them supplies. The hashtag #OccupySLU began to trend on Twitter as activists declared a sit in. Activists occupying the campus began to play a game of nighttime soccer. Like the action at the Ferguson police department on Saturday night where youth were dancing in the streets, the mood was one of jubilant resistance. Again, it was mostly youth on the frontlines.

Observers have said that it may be the largest convergence or action related to the police killings that St. Louis has seen yet.

* * *

What is clear from my time on the ground in St. Louis is that young people are the fire propelling this movement—an organized, nonviolent struggle to end police brutality and the white supremacist structures that perpetuate it. These are not riots, this is a resistance—and it’s growing. Black youth, and young Black women in particular, are at the frontlines.

This is a generation learning to organize, and it’s bringing an intersectional analysis of connected struggles into the movement. This is a generation that is being radicalized, purely out of necessity.

For me as a young black journalist, the racism I encountered was deeply jarring. But the resistance gives me hope. Lately that resistance has meant fighting back against brutality seemingly without bounds; while scores of protesters have been arrested, Darren Wilson remains at large. Despite an incredibly hostile climate on the ground, young activists are braving the worst to make it clear that we don’t have any option but to make change. Youth understand that at the end of the day, they don’t have a choice – it’s their lives on the line so they must either resist or die. One of the chants from the weekend captures this sentiment perfectly: “We ready, we ready, we ready, for you.”

]]>https://www.thenation.com/article/youth-are-frontlines-ferguson-and-they-refuse-back-down/{Young}ist Reclaims the Millennial Narrativehttps://www.thenation.com/article/youngist-reclaims-millennial-narrative/Muna Mire,Muna Mire,Muna Mire,Muna Mire,StudentNationMar 28, 2014{Young}ist aims to show millennials as a thriving, capable, growing network of youth fighting for a more just world.
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Millennials are in vogue. But the very idea of the millennial is a top-down phenomenon, a canned attempt to market to a young demographic. It is a strategy that has found success through the sheer force and repetitiveness of its message. Left with few alternatives, millennials consume this image of themselves. Eventually, they may internalize this set of images and ideals—regardless of how critical they were or still are.

Like many other marginalized groups, Millennials don't have a controlling stake in their own representation. The people who write about millennials aren't often themselves millennials. In fact, you can argue that popular narratives around the millennial as an identity category are constructed outside the authentic lived experiences of actual millennials. Those accounts can look like political disengagement, apathy, technological dysfunction and narcissism. Many of us don’t see ourselves reflected back in that story.

{Young}ist.org is an attempt to disrupt a circular, negative narrative about youth that cultivates hopelessness rather than efficacy among our peers. {Young}ist fills a niche: we see ourselves as positioned to report the stories of youth in crisis and in action.

The {Young}ist site is an independent media platform started by youth for youth to share news, stories, thought and culture that matter to us. It’s a way for young people to find their peers, share visions for change and connect over political struggles on the ground. Our staff and contributors provide a variety of content to make this possible, including multimedia, longform and investigative journalism. We don’t want to merely react to the narratives and stories that have been imposed on us externally—we have other stories to tell about youth. Our editorial strategy is undergirded by an understanding that there is a difference between providing evidence of social problems and mobilizing to fight them.

While we are coming together to tell the story of a generation that has been dispossessed, a generation that has inherited climate and economic crises, we also want to tell stories of how youth are mobilizing to organize around immigration, LGBTQ rights, racial and climate justice, education, labor and more. We are a relentlessly hopeful generation. When we say that we are dispossessed, we say that with an understanding that we also possess the tools, capacity and motivation to contend with these issues. We at {Young}ist want to intervene in the narrative about millennials not just because we think it’s wrong but because we know we embody its opposite: a thriving, capable, growing network of youth fighting for a more just world.

With our new website launch, {Young}ist will officially begin its journey and continue to generate and support content provided by a network of activists, organizers, journalists, writers, artists and collaborators that are already doing this work on the ground. The new site will make it possible for {Young}ist to continue to grow as a hub for independent media, thought, politics and culture that matters to young people. Our project aims to bring young people to the table who recognize the injustice in their lives and are taking on vibrant, participatory alternatives to make the lives of young people, collectively, more livable. If that sounds good to you, we ask you to check out our new website, now officially live at www.youngist.org.